Overview

Hotlinking refers to linking directly to non-html objects on other servers, such as images, movie files etc. This can greatly impact bandwidth usage and, in some cases, GPUs if you are on the (gs) Grid-Service. You can prevent these requests on your server using a .htaccess file.

Instructions

If you already have an .htaccess file simply add one of these two snippets of code to your existing file, or create a new plain text document with this code and upload it to your domains directory or a particular sub directory to localize the effect to just one of your sites or section of one of these sites:

Stop hotlinking

To simply stop hotlinking you can add the following to your .htaccess file. Replace example.com on line 3 with your own domain name.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)example.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp|zip|rar|mp3|flv|swf|xml|php|png|css|pdf)$ - [F]

Serve alternate content

To serve alternate content when hotlinking is detected. You can set up your .htaccess file to actually display different content when hotlinking is attempted. This is more commonly done with images suggesting your displeasure of this activity, such as serving up an "Angry Man" image in place of the hotlinked one. Once again, replace example.com on lines 3 and 4 with your own domain name.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)example.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ http://www.example.com/angryman.gif [R,L]

Resources

• Making directories browsable, solving 403 errors
• Making directories browsable, solving 403 errors
• Using rewrite rules
• Using rewrite rules
• Using .htaccess files
• Using .htaccess files
• How do I redirect my site using a .htaccess file?
• askapache.com
• Wikipedia: Hot-linking